Acetylcholine And Dopamine Effects On Neurological Health
Learning about the body’s neurological functions is essential to understanding how our nerve systems work, and how problems that relate to it can arise. For example, Parkinson’s is a known neurological disease. If you study neurological health closely, then you will certainly understand what can cause Parkinson’s disease and understand the disease better.
In this article, we shall talk about two vital neurotransmitters in the body: the dopamine and the acetylcholine.
Acetylcholine
Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter that you can find in both central and the peripheral nervous systems. Specifically, acetylcholine is responsible for sending the synapses that influences or regulates the movement of muscles that cover the skeletal system. Acetylcholine is also responsible for regulating smooth and cardiac muscle. You could say that acetylcholine is a very important neurotransmitter that is designed to make it possible for us to move around. When your brain sends a signal for the body to move, it is the acetylcholine that sends the signal to the necessary muscle groups, essentially “ordering” them to move like a general would to his soldiers.
Dopamine
On the other hand, Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that somehow makes us see the beauty of life as well as the harshness of it. This neurotransmitter regulates the rewards and pleasure reactions of our body. By extension, dopamine is also responsible for eliciting emotional response to certain situations. When we feel terrified at a potential danger to our lives, it is the dopamine neurotransmitter that is sending those synapses from the brain so that we can feel and make the necessary reactions in response to the circumstances.
To summarize, acetylcholine and dopamine work together in order to make the body react appropriately: acetylcholine influences the movement while dopamine produces the intention or emotional response. If there is an imbalance between these two, it can result to degeneration in a person’s emotional and psychomotor functions, i.e. Parkin’s disease.